


no statues for the vanquished

by lacrimalis



Series: cruel jokes from the universe [2]
Category: Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts (Cartoon)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Blood and Violence, Character Study, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Minor Character Death, Season/Series 02 Spoilers, Self-Destructive Behavior, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Yumyan's Halfway Home For Reformed Bastards
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-17
Updated: 2020-06-17
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:35:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24727606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lacrimalis/pseuds/lacrimalis
Summary: Jamack does not attend Scarlemagne's coronation, because he's not an idiot, and becausehedoesn't have a grudge against staying alive, unlike somesomepeople he could mention.So, uh... Who's gonna tell him?
Relationships: Harris & Jamack & Kwat, Jamack & Kipo Oak, Jamack & Scarlemagne
Series: cruel jokes from the universe [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2069229
Comments: 47
Kudos: 370





	no statues for the vanquished

**Author's Note:**

> this hurts me more than it'll hurt you )':

Wisely, Jamack and the Thea-Otters steered clear of the coronation. Puck complained that he wanted to attend, claimed it was their duty as thespians to bear witness to history in the making, or whatever. But Jamack had insider knowledge of Kipo’s indomitable will, and he knew the clash between her crew and Scarlemagne’s wouldn’t be pretty.

So he’d stood firm on the issue, and suggested they go for an encore at Brunchington Beach instead.

Cappuccino gave him the stink-eye for walking out on dishwasher duty, but he’d helped fight off Scarlemagne just as Kipo had, so she didn’t object past a couple snide asides. Actually, she complimented his stage combat direction – said maybe his talents were wasted on dishwashing, anyway. Jamack preened, defenseless at the praise of a former superior. He may not have worked for Cappuccino long, but her regard still had him croaking happily.

He received the news that Kipo had defeated Scarlemagne by ambushing a Motor Skunk and asking. Demanding, really. Jamack masterfully conceals the relief he feels when he hears she's okay, even though it makes his knees feel weak. Sue him, the reckless kid had him worried.

Puck begs for more details, but his obnoxious personality drives the skunk off (which is a surprising first for Jamack). He pouts and complains until Jamack agrees they should head to Timbercat Village, which is where they hear Kipo is headed.

Puck is over the moon just thinking about hearing from the jaguar’s mouth the tale of her triumph over Scarlemagne, so Jamack isn’t put in the uncomfortable position of having to explain why _he_ wants to see her.

The way Jamack pitches the idea to the rest of them is that they should try and get their hands on some maple syrup in exchange for their performance. That stuff is a hot commodity, right up there with chocolate, so it’ll be a worthwhile investment despite Timbercat Village being so far out of their way.

The decision is unanimous, if mostly coerced by Puck and Jamack's combined force of personality.

They head to Timbercat Village.

*

Puck's admiration for Jamack is overshadowed only by his hero worship for Kipo, so the performance they have most readily to hand is the one about Jamack.

 _The Ballad of Newton Wolves' Bluff_ would be in poor taste, considering. Jamack is confident Kipo will appreciate their new act, and if he's anxious about its reception – well, this will be the first time they'll have performed it for someone Jamack knows personally. Surely that's reason enough.

He has a private laugh when he imagines how it might be received by his former colleagues. Kwat would stew in narrow-eyed silence, but he’s sure Harris would be vocal in taking exception to his unflattering depiction.

Puck is self-aggrandizing and dramatic, but he does good work, for what it's worth. He creates a ballad which encapsulates the salient details of Jamack's life in a digestible two-act that even a Timbercat's flighty attention span can handle.

A lonely tadpole surviving in a cutthroat meritocracy; an alliance of necessity between the brave and noble Jamack and his gutless, disloyal cohorts, Harris and Kwat. The Mega Bunny, quickly followed by his exile. His change of heart – Puck already had Kipo's costume prepared, and Jamack found it difficult to begrudge her inclusion in the story of his life.

His change of heart: a melancholy lament in the bowels of a Mega Bunny warren.

His daring rescue of Kipo and friends, dramatized to his satisfaction.

Scene. Applause. Exit stage left.

*

The Thea-Otters are eager to accept the adulation of their audience, and Jamack is eager for an excuse to waste his own time, so he suffers the usual post-show clean-up with considerably less grumbling than is his habit.

The Timbercats have provided all accommodations, and the troupe has a tidy storage room to house their costumes and supplies.

Kipo finds him there.

"Jamack, do you have a second?"

Jamack looks up from the clipboard where he's been triple-checking inventory needlessly. He smiles when he sees her. He expected she would greet him with her familiar youthful exuberance, but the troubled expression on her face makes his smile fall in concern. He sets aside the clipboard, feeling a little guilty for avoiding this. "Sure, kid. What's up?"

Kipo shifts nervously. 

In an effort to diffuse the tension, Jamack clears his throat and tries, "Did you like the show?"

She smiles suddenly, like she had to be reminded of it. "Yeah, I did!" Her smile turns wry. "The part where you beat up all the Newton Wolves was cool. A little different than I remember it…"

Jamack scoffs, shy. "Ever heard of creative license?" he demands evasively. Kipo's smile widens with mischief, and Jamack waves a hand. "We can compare notes later. What did you really want to talk about, Kipo?" He settles down on a crate of supplies, pats the space next to him. Kipo sits gratefully, but she gets that troubled look on her face again. 

Kipo takes a deep breath, staring at the opposite wall like she's hoping it'll give her strength. "I need to tell you something," she says.

Jamack lays a hand on her shoulder. Some of the stiffness in her posture dissipates, which is something of a relief. "Okay," he says slowly. "Are you… in some kind of trouble?"

She shakes her head, and Jamack allows himself to breathe a little easier. "I," Kipo starts, then starts again. "When I was in Scarlemagne's palace, I saw Harris and Kwat."

Jamack's eyes narrow. "Did they say something to you?" _Did they hurt you,_ Jamack doesn't ask, because obviously Kipo is right here and that was a week ago and she _seems_ just fine – but he still looks her up and down, like he can find a bruise to explain the unsettling feeling rising in his gorge.

 _She saw them a week ago,_ he thinks, which is more recently than he last saw them, though not by much. He hasn't seen them since he left them in the dust of a Mega Bunny's outrage and a Humming Bommer's explosive nectar, and he'd thought maybe they…

Jamack has to remind himself that Sartori exiled him, and Harris and Kwat stood and watched. He hadn't been _worried_ about them. He'd just… wondered. What had happened to them.

He hadn't gone to Brunchington looking for them. He _hadn't._ He'd just been hungry, and nostalgic, and if all his fond memories of eating at Brunchington happened to include his two former colleagues that doesn't mean he was hoping to _see_ them there.

But these days they're working right under Sartori, so probably they don't have as much free time to spend at Brunchington as they used to – not like when they were stationed with Jamack at the watchtower. It seems like just yesterday Harris was questioning his leadership while Kwat stood by in imperturbable silence, keeping her opinion to herself unless asked.

"Not really," Kipo says. Jamack bears down on the strange feeling he distantly identifies as maybe being _disappointment._ "They were with another frog…?"

"Mrs. Sartori," Jamack supplies. He wants to ask if Kipo's _sure_ they didn't say anything to her, because she looks pretty upset, and Jamack isn't the only member of their merry band who knows how to make deep cuts with a silver-tongued lashing.

But he doesn't ask. She'll get there in her own time.

"Scarlemagne, he…" Kipo curls into herself a little, slouches and holds her arms in a sad, lonely little hug. "… He made the three of them into gold statues.”

This news does not seem to justify the grave solemnity with which Kipo delivers it. “… Oh,” Jamack says lamely. “I’m guessing Mrs. Sartori was thrilled. She always wanted a big, ugly monument erected in her honor.” That Harris and Kwat got one too is a little unusual, but they must have done something for Scarlemagne befitting the reward. Jamack tries to muster some envious bitterness at being left out, but gold is just so _tacky._

If it were him, he’d at least insist on marble.

Kipo grimaces at his reaction, and Jamack isn’t sure what she wants from him. “No, Jamack, they weren’t – they were made _into_ gold statues.”

And belatedly, like an idiot, Jamack recalls the details of Kipo’s final showdown with Scarlemagne that had been floating in the rumor mill since it all went down. Something about liquid gold and a ridiculously ostentatious amphitheatre.

Liquid gold. He'd assumed that was just poetical conceit – referring to the golden city reflected in its aqueducts, or possibly some kind of yellow wine distributed for the occasion.

 _They were made into gold statues,_ Kipo said. Another interpretation of her words comes to him, absurd and dreadful. Jamack is cold-blooded, but it’s never chilled his veins quite like this.

“What?” he breathes, his voice reedy and thin and unsure. It doesn't sound like him at all.

Kipo watches his expression carefully, and Jamack couldn’t say what his face was doing if his life depended on it. “They’re… dead, Jamack. I just… thought you should know, I guess.”

Jamack feels his hand fall away from Kipo’s shoulder. “What?” he tries to say again. No sound comes out of his mouth. Something in his throat twists up, tight and painful, and he has to lick his lips to prove to himself he’s not choking on his tongue.

Doused in liquid gold and displayed somewhere in Scarlemagne’s fallen city. Deliriously, Jamack wonders if that’s a fate they’d have been satisfied with. Mod Frogs don’t exactly hold funerary rites in a place of pride – they’re too liable to die of territory disputes or predation, or a good old-fashioned backstabbing. Doesn’t leave much room for getting precious about putting corpses in boxes.

So it’s unaccountable that the first thing Jamack wants to know is, “Where are they? I mean…”

What _does_ he mean? Their corpses? Their ‘statues’? The mental image of that is so disquietingly _bizarre_ in its morbidity. Mod Frogs get killed and eaten often enough that the idea of _not_ having a corpse is a familiar one. Practically comfortable. Hold a wake, get it out of your system, file an expense report.

That they were preserved at all feels almost obscene by comparison – and that’s to say nothing of the barbaric grandeur of the _method._

“… They were in the coliseum when it was flooded with gold,” Kipo says, and Jamack has to laugh, his mouth a rictus of horrified humor. _Flooded with gold._ If that doesn’t capture the extent of Scarlemagne’s excess and absurdity, Jamack doesn’t know what else possibly could.

Now he understands Puck’s burning curiosity to know the details of this confrontation, because Jamack has no earthly clue how this comedy of errors makes a single bit of sense.

Kipo looks at him with her big eyes, sad and plaintive and pink, and he can’t – _look_ at her right now. Her earnest expression threatens to lay him bare, and he’s _trying_ to hide behind the hilarity of his former colleagues’ ludicrously gruesome demise, make time for himself to shore up his mental defenses before the grief hits him in the chest like a runaway convertible.

Associations come with the frenetic urgency of fight-or-flight, and the runaway convertible comparison yields this: Harris complaining that Jamack always gets to drive the car when they go out on patrol, late one summer evening at the watchtower. Jamack has Kwat drive just to spite Harris, and in the balmy night air they drive the streets with the top of the convertible down. They’re meant to be keeping their heads on a swivel, but Harris tilts the passenger seat all the way back and glares up at the stars with his arms crossed.

Moments like that – lunch breaks overlooking a sunlit graveyard of skyscrapers, tag-teaming in budget negotiations for the new fiscal quarter, waiting to be reprimanded by Sartori, guilty and conspiratorial – cloud his vision, fill him up until he feels like he’s choking on them.

Jamack feels nauseous, tempted to heave up his stomach and scrape the feelings out. Before he can do that, though, he can feel his face crumpling, and he turns away from Kipo and stands to try and salvage what remains of his dignity.

Pacing the room in a flurry of distressed, manic energy, he comes face to face with the ridiculous papier-mâché costumes of his former colleagues. Jamack squats down and picks up the mask made to resemble Harris. His hands tremble. The brightly painted prop feels somehow like sacrilege in his hands.

He’d chosen the paint for Harris’s eyes himself. Their striking red color was something he’d always admired.

Jamack says, “So they’re… buried.” Or as good as, he supposes. He can’t imagine anyone excavating a coliseum full of gold. What would be the point? Who would bother going to all that trouble, just to unearth the petrified corpses of three Mod Frogs?

Kipo steps closer with all the light-footed grace of a cat, which – apt, Jamack thinks with a weak huff. She's really come into her own. Pride in Kipo commingles with the awful, confused mess of the rest of his feelings. Between the bookends of spring Jamack’s life has been completely upended, his worldview turned on its head by one silly pink burrow girl and her ridiculous friends.

Quietly Kipo says, "Pretty much," and slowly kneels by his side.

"Huh," says Jamack, because if he tries to say anything more than that he's going to start –

A wet and dreary croak bursts from his throat, and he drops the papier-mâché mask to slap a hand over his mouth. His shoulders are stiff with the tension of keeping all his anguished feelings tied up tight inside his chest – a stack of paperwork bundled neatly together with a length of string.

 _Memorandum for Distribution. Subject: Everything is Terrible,_ Jamack thinks incoherently.

"Jamack?" Kipo offers, gentle with concern. She places a hand on his upper arm. 

More associations come at that: Kwat placing a hand on his upper arm to help him to his feet; a territory dispute, one they'd lost. They'll have to report it to Sartori. Harris and Jamack are too injured to walk, so Kwat throws them over her shoulders like a pair of garbage bags. They glance at each other across the broad expanse of Kwat's back, black-eyed and resigned.

"I didn't know you knew them your whole life," Kipo says, in reference to the otters' rendition of his life story – and god, they'll have to scrap the entire first act now. It's in such poor taste Jamack could gag. "Were you… close? I thought they called them…"

Kipo doesn't finish the thought, because she's not cruel. That doesn't mean Jamack doesn't know what she's talking about.

 _Gutless and disloyal,_ was the phrase. Mod Frogs don't have compunctions about speaking ill of the dead. Sometimes you can only _really_ air your grievances when there's no chance your words will make it back to the person you're talking about. The words aren't even untrue – they _had_ abandoned Jamack when he needed them, too afraid of reprisal to oppose Sartori in anything – so he doesn't know why it makes him feel so wretched that he said that about them, let Puck repeat it.

"It's a little more complicated than that," Jamack says feebly. The three of them had always occupied a liminal space in their relationships with each other, in a constant state of metamorphosis. Mocking Kwat and Harris had felt like a natural progression in their adversarial relationship: a counterattack mounted on the wreckage of their shared past. With a sudden start, Jamack realizes he'd been waiting for their reactions to his latest rebuttal. He'd imagined gloating, flaunting his professional success in their faces.

See? he would have said. I don't need you, either.

Jamack may have made caricatures of them, but the urge to do so was fueled by the part of him that ached to see them again.

He didn't want them _dead._

But it didn't matter what he wanted, did it? He'd given up the opportunity to meaningfully exert his will upon the world when he left Kipo to decide the fate of human- and mutekind without him.

 _If I'd gone with Kipo, they might still be alive._ Thoughts like that are double-edged swords, but Jamack only tightens his grip, clinging to them with the desperation of a flagellant. _Maybe I could have talked to them one last time._

That thought strikes Jamack with such a fiercely desolate longing that it physically pains him. Grief overpowers him in a crashing wave, breathtakingly heavy and heartlessly sudden, and a sob erupts from his stupid head. He bites down on his knuckle to muffle any more traitorous sounds with a mind to make a break for freedom.

"Oh, Jamack," Kipo says. Her kindness is a gentle breeze. Jamack shivers beneath its touch. "I'm so sorry."

"Did they say anything?" Jamack asks hoarsely. Because Kipo had said _not really_ the last time he asked, which means _yes, they did say something, but not anything worth repeating._ But now Jamack needs to hear it, no matter what it is.

"Um," Kipo stammers, gathering her thoughts. "I was going to talk with Scarlemagne to try and change his mind about the coronation–" _Of course you were,_ Jamack thinks, exasperated and fond–"and they attacked me. I beat them," Kipo says, like it's no big deal, and Jamack thinks _of course you did._ "Tied them up with their tongues. Uh, then Scarlemagne showed up…"

Kipo is glossing clumsily over things, but Jamack recognizes it's only in her haste to give him the information he asked for. He'll get the full story later.

"Then Sartori said, 'Hey, what about us?' And… that's the last I saw of them, before… you know."

Jamack wants to cry almost as badly as he absolutely _doesn't_ want to do that in front of Kipo. "What was she _thinking,"_ Jamack moans. Was Sartori a complete idiot? Jamack would never have tempted fate by doing something so unbelievably stupid.

That her sheer entitlement evidently outstripped even her sense of self-preservation should have made Jamack feel vindicated. If she lacked the foresight not to invite Scarlemagne's attention at an uncertain moment like the one Kipo described, maybe she was wrong to cast out Jamack.

Mostly, though, it just makes him feel bereft. She had dragged Kwat and Harris down with her, after all.

From what Kipo told him, she wasn't present for their final moments. Jamack is torn between relief she didn't have to see that, and guilt for wishing she _had,_ just so she could give him a more complete picture.

It burns Jamack that he'll never know their last words. What were they thinking about? Did they have any regrets? He feels foolish for hoping they might have been thinking about him, that they might have regretted abandoning him. What's the point in hoping for that?

Probably the only thoughts they could spare were how they didn't want to die horribly, but they were going to anyway.

Kipo sits in patience and silent sympathy beside him. He's completely lost track of how long they've both remained speechless. He isn't entirely sure what to say to break it.

Eventually, though, he realizes there's something he's curious about. Hollow and hoarse, he observes, "Didn't know you could make liquid gold."

"Yeah." Kipo's response is brittle. "Every element liquefies at a certain temperature – except, like, helium. Doesn't solidify at standard pressure." Kipo is rambling, taking refuge in what she knows, the things she's certain about. Of course she is. Jamack can't _do_ this to her.

But he's still selfish, Kipo didn't change him so fundamentally that he stopped being that, so he does it to her anyway. "Yeah? What temperature does gold liquefy?"

"Jamack, you don't–" _want to know?_ Probably, but this isn't the first time Jamack has acted outside his best interest in response to emotional distress. His expression must show something of his desperation, because Kipo relents, even though it sounds like it pains her to do so. "… About 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit."

Jamack makes a sound he's never heard before.

He stands, and Kipo sways where she sits, her hand falling away from their point of contact.

"Jamack…?"

"Thank you," he says unconvincingly. "For telling me."

"… Are you gonna be okay?" Kipo asks, rising to her feet to stand at his side.

"Good question," Jamack mutters, rubbing what passes for the bridge of his nose. "I'll let you know when I figure it out."

"Okay," Kipo acquiesces, holding one arm nervously. "… Wanna come eat flapjacks with us?"

The invitation makes Jamack grimace. He's barely holding it together as it is – trying to manage with a rowdy group of humans and mutes sounds like a nectar capsule waiting to blow. "I think I… need to be alone."

"Sure," Kipo says, artificially breezy. "Um… do you… want a hug?"

Jamack looks at Kipo and sighs heavily.

"You don't have to–"

"Come on, bring it in," Jamack says, extending one arm in outwardly reluctant invitation. But he's only mortal. He could use a hug right about now.

Kipo throws her arms around his neck and clings to him. He returns the embrace, letting the momentary comfort lend him strength.

He'll be needing it, if he's going to keep his composure long enough to find somewhere _else_ to fall the rest of the way apart in peace.

*

Jamack finds catharsis at the bottom of his second bottle of maple liqueur. Or is it his third?

Anyway, it's _something_ like catharsis, but maybe it's closer to the equilibrium one finds when they've hit the bottom of a dry, desolate well and can't possibly sink any lower. Though Jamack feels up to the challenge from where he's draped over a tree branch, high above and away from Timbercat Village. 

There isn't much he can actually do to ensure his privacy – not if he doesn't want to run afoul of an apex predator in the wilderness. Frog calls can be heard for miles, and he hasn't stopped croaking since he parted ways with Kipo outside the storage room. Undignified as he finds it, the croaks are simply irrepressible in the face of his grief.

Jamack takes another reckless swig of maple liqueur. He doesn't relish it. Its viscosity troublingly resembles molasses, and the sweetness clings to his teeth and the sides of his mouth. He'd call it a malt if he weren't convinced it was mostly refined sugar.

But if it's that, it's also alcohol, and Jamack is miles away from the speakeasies he used to frequent in the days when he was still welcome at the pond. So it'll have to do.

And if nothing else, the brew's strength isn't in question: his tongue is starting to go numb, for one thing, which is as encouraging for his state of inebriation as it is concerning for reasons of safety. If he stumbles climbing back down because he's too drunk to stand or jump, his tongue can't stop him from becoming a wet smear on the forest floor. Not if he can't feel it. Which he can't.

"This was a stupid idea," Jamack realizes. Begs the question of why he went ahead with it. He's usually smarter than this. "Smarter than Harris, anyway," he amends, because when the three of them are drinking together they're _all_ stupid, so it becomes more germane to understand the concept of intelligence like it's graded on a curve.

Where are those two, anyway? Even in the depths of his inebriated stupor, Jamack knows that he never goes drinking without Harris and Kwat. The mere fact that he's as drunk as he is suggests that they must be around here somewhere.

"Harris, Kwat," he calls, surprised by the sound of his own voice. He must have been crying. "Bring the car around, one of you."

No response is forthcoming, and Jamack looks around at his unfamiliar surroundings. How in the world did he even get here? Did they bring the car at all?

"Kwat," he calls again, elongating the vowel sound of her name in a doleful whine. "Harris!" The sibilant becomes a growl of frustration as his complaints go unanswered.

There's just no finding good help these days.

Jamack holds his head, feeling the onset of a splitting headache. "Okay, Jamack, think: how'd you get here?"

He's pretty sure he drove here – feels the phantom rumble of a dragonfly-drawn vehicle beneath his buzzing fingers to corroborate the memory. Puck soliloquizing in the backseat. And earlier they'd had brunch? At Cappucino's– 

Remembrance hits Jamack hard and grief descends upon him anew, clenching a fist around his stomach and forcing the issue of the low-grade nausea he's been on the fence about for the past few hours.

Jamack clings to the branch as his stomach blurts out its contents. The process of temporarily expelling part of his digestive tract has never not been disgusting, but it's never stopped him from drinking before, either.

It _has_ made him more prone to drinking in moderation, apart from a few memorable benders in his young adulthood – during one of which Jamack, Kwat and Harris trashed a rival Mod Frog's car and got away with it, despite making themselves a spectacle with their drunken revelry. As far as he knew, neither of them ever breathed a word of it. Keeping each other's confidence, for such a dumb little thing.

He'd thought that meant Kwat and Harris would always have his back. Apparently the potential payoff just wasn't big enough to bother throwing him under the bus yet, Jamack thinks bitterly. That came later.

And what a payoff it was! Kwat and Harris had achieved the coveted positions of Sartori's left- and right-hand frogs after Jamack was exiled, after all.

Jamack wonders dismally how they managed to pull that one off. Didn't Sartori blame them for their part in falling for Kipo's trick? Or did Kwat and Harris make it out to have been all Jamack's fault, with them as the voices of plaintive reason? That would easily turn three scathing reprimands and demotions into one scapegoat exile.

As indignant as the fabricated betrayal makes him feel, it's not any more empirically true than it was the last time he imagined it. In reality Jamack has no idea why he was punished while Kwat and Harris were promoted. He'd missed that conversation chasing Kipo, and then fighting his way out between the suffocating squeeze of dozing Mega Bunny kits. 

Jamack shudders with visceral displeasure at the memory.

Ever since his exile, Jamack has fantasized about a blow-out argument where he slaps Kwat and Harris silly and demands answers, and then they apologize and tell him why they did it.

Jamack supposes now he'll never know.

He stands, swaying precariously in his Chelsea boots, and gathers up his bundle of maple liqueur bottles. He looks down at the forest floor, vision blurring as he thinks, _I've never climbed a tree this high before._

And then he blinks and opens his eyes laying in a pile of leaves.

Jamack shifts in the detritus of shed vegetation and decomposing soil, trying to suss out if he has any injuries consistent with a long fall. His whole body feels like a bruise, but that could just be the alcohol poisoning.

The Thea-Otters had expressed a desire to stay until they had Kipo's full account of the coliseum debacle, so Jamack doesn't necessarily have anywhere to be in the morning. It's just as well, because he isn't in any fit state to drive the car he'd acquired for them shortly after becoming their stage combat instructor and sometimes-manager.

Nowhere to be, then – and if the Thea-Otters want his help choreographing the combat aspects of Kipo's account then they can wait until the afternoon.

Still. It's dark, and he has no idea what time it is.

Bed time, maybe.

Jamack staggers to his feet. There's a token effort to brush the leaves and dirt from his jacket, but it's a bad job. He's been careful to keep his suit in good repair since Cappuccino was kind enough to have it mended for him, but if he did actually fall he might have ripped a seam.

Circumstances being what they are, he's inclined to forgive himself some dishevelment.

He's had worse, anyway.

*

Jamack does not remember where in the treehouse labyrinth the Timbercats made accommodations for him and the Thea-Otters.

But that's not the reason he's not in bed.

In the deep stillness of Timbercat Village, everyone is asleep except a lone pair of Timbercats, though from the look of it they're not long for the waking world: listing to the side, grip on their axes failing, clearly determined to guard the high-up entrance of a tree trunk despite all the telltale signs of exhaustion.

The liquor reserves weren't even this tight on security when Jamack saw fit to squirm his way in and take his fill. There aren't many things they could be guarding, and Jamack has a sneaking suspicion he knows what it is. Who, rather.

Jamack thinks he's earned a lucky break after the cosmic joke his life has become, and this one suits. It might as well be gift-wrapped.

The Mod Frogs had put him on enough stakeouts that it's the easiest thing in the world to watch from afar and wait the Timbercats out. One of them slinks off for a nap, the other assuring her he'll keep vigil. He drops to sleep the very instant she's out of sight, leaning heavily on his axe.

Jamack slips out of his shoes so that when he lands on the walkway, it is without a sound to disturb the snoring Timbercat. He plucks a ring of keys from the mute's belt and steps through the wide-open archway, descending the dark flight of stairs.

The prison cell he finds at the bottom is about what he expected.

Its occupant is exactly what he had been hoping for.

Scarlemagne stiffens. Jamack remains silent to keep the suspense alive. Then he croaks, giving the game away, and he stifles the urge to curse the physiological response to stress.

Infuriatingly, Scarlemagne _relaxes._ He rolls over and props his chin up with his hand, grinning into the dark. He can't see Jamack, but Jamack can see him. "You certainly took your time, didn't you?"

Jamack doesn't say anything to that because he's not entirely sure what Scarlemagne is talking about. He does croak again, though, and he grits his teeth to try and stop it from happening again.

Taking his visitor's silence as an invitation to listen to himself talk, Scarlemagne continues, "When I didn't see a _single_ Mod Frog at my coronation, I admit to expecting a certain amount of opposition to my rule." Jamack's croaking has given Scarlemagne a better picture of the room, and his eyes are pointed more-or-less in Jamack's direction now. "But to wait so long to make an attempt on my life in revenge for killing your leader, well – it's sloppy, isn't it? I thought you frogs were supposed to be _organized._ "

Right. Scarlemagne thinks this is about Sartori. Why would he think any differently? Harris and Kwat were probably just casualties of circumstance, and for some reason Jamack can't conscience killing Scarlemagne if he doesn't know what it's for.

He unlocks the cell with his stolen keyring, and is gratified by the flash of fear he glimpses in Scarlemagne's eyes before he's able to hide it. 

This is probably a stupid idea.

"Come with me," Jamack bids. He must not fully succeed at keeping the animosity out of his voice, because Scarlemagne hesitates. "And stay quiet."

"Oooh, are you springing me from prison?" Scarlemagne coos in a stage whisper. He stands then, feeling his way to the open cell door in the dark. "How _exciting!"_

"What did I _just_ say?" He's unsettled by the way Scarlemagne's exuberance and distractibility reminds him of Kipo. Also, he's irritated. He did _just_ say to be quiet.

"Right, right," Scarlemagne whispers, quieter this time. "Mum's the word."

Jamack grabs him by the arm and frogmarches him up the stairs. Scarlemagne goes without a fuss, for whatever reason.

*

Jamack shoves Scarlemagne when they arrive in the clearing, sending him stumbling through the gnarled tangle of moon-dappled undergrowth.

Scarlemagne recovers quickly, brushing dust off his shoulders and straightening his cravat with all the airy confidence of one who’s been invited out for a pleasant evening stroll. "Taking a break from our daring escape? Good idea. You look like you could use a rest, my friend."

 _Friend._ That sets Jamack’s teeth on edge.

Scarlemagne doesn't even know his name, and considering everything else the epithet of 'friend' is so wildly inappropriate it makes Jamack croak with indignation. It might just be alluding to their common goal of liberating Scarlemagne from his jailers. But Scarlemagne already mentioned he suspected Jamack of wanting to kill him, so there’s an argument to be made that he’s trying to force the association out of self-preservation. Or is he just trying to rile him up?

If it’s that, it’s working. "I'm not your friend," Jamack spits venomously. Harris and Kwat weren’t ever even really his ‘friends’. He’s not about to start extending the sentiment to _Scarlemagne,_ of all people.

Scarlemagne continues like Jamack hasn't spoken. "And if you don't mind my saying so, you reek of a distillery," he says, waving a delicate hand in front of his nose.

Jamack socks him right in the snout. His hand-eye coordination isn't at its best, and his knuckle catches on one of Scarlemagne's fangs. The sharp sting of the cut narrows Jamack's focus, drawing his mind back into his body from the hazy cloud where it's been floating all evening. 

"You knocked out my tooth," Scarlemagne says, astounded. He wipes the blood from his mouth with his sleeve, pressing his tongue speculatively into the gap his fang used to occupy.

Jamack croaks rudely. "I think that's the least of your concerns."

Scarlemagne touches his bleeding gum thoughtfully. He winces, asks, "And what is my chief concern, here?"

His placidity makes Jamack feel like he's going to blow a fuse. Scarlemagne's empire crumbled beneath the weight of his hubris, all his great works so much dust. And _Jamack_ is the one losing his cool?

"You killed my colleagues, for starters," Jamack informs him, words low and measured to keep his voice from breaking. "So I think you should definitely be concerned about that."

The flicker of fear returns fleetingly to Scarlemagne's face. It's immeasurably gratifying, for how small of a reaction it is. "Oh… Terribly sorry about that. But, you know what they say about love and war–"

"You're not sorry," Jamack tells him. "Not yet."

"… I see," Scarlemagne says. "So this is, what? Vigilante justice? Are you to be my judge, jury, and executioner?"

Jamack marches up to Scarlemagne and seizes his rumpled cravat, yanking him down to Jamack's level. "Did you even know their names?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"Their _names,"_ Jamack repeats, his voice cracked with grief. His bleeding fist drips between them, seeping into Scarlemagne's cravat.

Scarlemagne's eyes dart across Jamack's face, then to the sides, searching the empty forest clearing. Searching for an escape.

He _doesn't_ know.

Jamack barks out a laugh, bright incredulity a gauzy veil over the storm of his anger. "Unbelievable," he says, releasing Scarlemagne roughly. "I guess that sort of thing is beneath your notice, isn't it?"

Scarlemagne is looking at Jamack in cornered confusion. Now is probably as good a time as any to tell the mandrill what a great disappointment he turned out to be.

"I can't believe I used to admire you," says Jamack.

"You did?" asks Scarlemagne, like this is _news_ to a megalomaniac with delusions of grandeur. That someone might admire him.

Outraged and appalled, Jamack throws his hands up. "Yes! Are you kidding me? I thought you were so _smart,"_ he says, injecting bitter hindsight into the word. "Pitting the mutes against the humans? Giving us a common enemy to unite against? _No one_ had ever done what you did. You were making this whole new world order, and I," Jamack laughs ruefully, "I wanted so _badly_ to be a part of that."

Scarlemagne preens, and Jamack is baffled. Hasn't anyone ever paid Scarlemagne a compliment before now? How did someone accomplish so much and not get a big head, surrounding themselves with yesmen and sycophants?

Dawning on Jamack is the confirmation of his suspicions about Scarlemagne: "But you didn't really know what you were doing, did you? All your success was some kind of happy accident."

Scarlemagne frowns. "That's a bit harsh," he says, offended.

Jamack clicks his tongue. "Am I wrong?" he demands. "You had every mute on the surface wrapped around your little finger. Humans trembled in fear at the name _Scarlemagne."_ Mockery drips from his tongue with all the effusive generosity of pondwater. "And for what? So you could lose the plot completely and go off the rails at the eleventh hour? What is _wrong_ with you!"

There's something about the way Scarlemagne suffers Jamack's verbal abuse and rough handling, patient and resigned. It's the sort of passive disinterest in his own well-being that gives him a clue to Scarlemagne's state of mind. Like he has nothing left to lose.

Wry and bleak, Jamack supposes that makes two of them.

"You had it all," Jamack goes on, "and I would have given up everything I had, just for a _chance_ to be part of what you made."

"You would have?" Scarlemagne asks, strangely needful again. He looks like he's genuinely never considered he might have anything to offer anyone else.

Jamack flattens his hand on his face, searching for inner strength. "How do you _not_ know this," he demands. 

"I thought," Scarlemagne says, and when he falters Jamack crosses his arms and tilts his head down, expectant. This ought to be good. "I thought no one would follow me out of anything other than fear."

"Well, _obviously,"_ Jamack says. "But the fear you inspire _gets_ you respect, it's – a balancing act, between them. You have to walk a tightrope. Reward your loyalists and punish your enemies, not – whatever _that_ was." Jamack tosses his arm out, as if to indicate the invisible phantom of the coliseum beside them. "You can't double down on fear when things are finally going your way. What's the point of ruling if you're going to terrorize your subjects into an early grave?"

Scarlemagne hunches his shoulders. "I hadn't thought of it that way."

"Yeah, I got that," Jamack says nastily.

Awkward silence descends over them like the morning fog. Scarlemagne says, "I might've benefited from your advice a few years ago." An olive branch, misshapen and out-of-place with so much else between them.

"You might've asked," Jamack throws back. He sighs angrily. "The Mod Frogs were some of your most enthusiastic supporters, in case that escaped your notice, too."

"Were they? I wonder why," Scarlemagne says.

"Uh, because you were a great racketeer? With a smart propaganda campaign? United mutes that had been fighting for centuries in the span of a few years – which, apart from being impressive, also secured our territory and investments?" Jamack shoves his hands in his pockets and shrugs. "Mod Frogs respect sartorial excellence and business acumen, and you had both of those in spades, so. Take your pick, I guess."

Scarlemagne sniffs. "Your claim seems hard to credit, considering there were no Mod Frogs in attendance at my coronation."

Is Scarlemagne fishing for compliments? Is he… _pouting?_ Jamack rolls his eyes so hard his headache makes a swift and merciless return. "Yeah, that's the part where you went off the rails, remember? Plus," he says, thoughtful now, "Sartori was probably hedging her bets with you. Told her people to hang back until she gave the word, and when she didn't…"

Huh. Sartori wasn't as stupid as he thought, then. And for all the things Jamack resents and blames her for, the cruelty of Kwat and Harris's fate was all Scarlemagne.

Which. Right.

Jamack gets back on track. "So why'd you kill them?" he demands. "They wouldn't have been hanging around your palace if you hadn't invited them – so what mistake did they make to lose your favor? They try to stage a coup?" He wouldn’t put it past Sartori for sheer ambition, but somehow he doubts she’d be so hasty. Good things to those who wait, and all.

"They… attacked one of my guests," Scarlemagne says, evasive now that they're back on the subject of Jamack’s motive for murder.

"Kipo," Jamack surmises, and Scarlemagne's face does something completely incomprehensible at the sound of her name. _Now, what's that about…?_ "Did it occur to you that they were protecting your interests? They probably thought she was an escaped prisoner." Jamack is less sure about this, since Sartori had every reason to want to hurt Kipo for destroying the pond – but he _is_ sure she wouldn’t have openly attacked someone she knew to be Scarlemagne’s ally.

“I couldn’t simply let their disrespect go unanswered,” Scarlemagne objects.

“Really,” Jamack says, unimpressed. “You rally all the mutes to hunt Kipo down, and _now_ it’s disrespectful?”

“I didn’t know it was _her.”_

“And what’s so special about her?” Jamack asks – not because he doesn’t think Kipo is special, obviously, but because he wants to know why _Scarlemagne_ thinks she is. “Who is she to you?”

Scarlemagne scoffs, says, “She’s my–” then stops. Savior? Mortal enemy? Friend? Jamack wonders at the lonely possessive pronoun, but Scarlemagne doesn’t finish the thought. “I don’t have to tell you that,” Scarlemagne decides.

“Then how about I take a guess?” Jamack suggests. He’s pretty sure he can put the pieces together with what Kipo and Scarlemagne have given him. “Kipo changed your heart, and you got attached. And after the Mod Frogs tried to attack her, you killed them. For her.” Jamack kicks Scarlemagne in the chest, and he goes down easy. Jamack relishes the opportunity to loom. He smiles humorlessly. “How _did_ that go over with her, by the way?”

Scarlemagne scowls and rubs his knuckles over his chest, where a shoe-shaped bruise must surely be forming. “Not well,” he admits.

“No _kidding,”_ Jamack says in mock surprise. “I wonder why.”

“As do I,” says Scarlemagne, failing to read the room.

“You’re serious,” Jamack realizes. Good grief. Why is this _his_ job? “Vengeful murder might be an appropriate gift for a Mod Frog, but Kipo doesn’t want anyone to _die._ She’d probably have been happy if you made them _apologize.”_

“You know her,” Scarlemagne says.

“Yeah, who doesn’t? Savior of the surface, summoner of the Mega Jaguar. The Timbercats literally cannot stop talking about her.”

“You know her _personally,”_ Scarlemagne clarifies.

“Don’t see how that’s any business of yours, but sure,” Jamack says, “I know her. Almost turned her over to you, too.” Jamack is not entirely sure why he shares this detail, except the irony is too rich not to spend a moment appreciating it. Strange, where they all ended up. Jamack was so sure he would turn Kipo over to Scarlemagne and be his righthand man. Just how thoroughly Kipo flipped the script on _both_ of them is worthy of admiration, so. Maybe that's why he says it.

Recognition flashes in Scarlemagne’s eyes. _“You’re_ the one who let her go?”

“And bingo was his name-o,” Jamack says flatly. “Took you that long, huh?” Jamack steps over Scarlemagne's legs and crouches over them, grabbing the mandrill by his collar. His eyes are mostly yellow, but this close Jamack can make out the color of his irises, and they’re red-eyed tree frog red. Oh, he hates everything about that. A rush of grief and longing threatens to pitch him sideways, but Jamack grits his teeth and tightens his grip. "Now that we're all introduced, and seeing as you took something from me…"

"Sartori?" Scarlemagne guesses.

"Not _Sartori,"_ Jamack snarls and jostles him. "The other two. My–" _colleagues,_ his mind supplies, but Jamack trips over the word. Harris and Kwat were more than just _colleagues,_ but they weren't raised with enough kindness to recognize it in themselves, or to openly acknowledge what they meant to each other.

It's only now they're gone that Jamack sees their importance, like looking into a clear tide pool when all the substrate settles to the bottom.

"My friends," he decides, voice firm with new resolve. "Jogged your memory yet?"

Scarlemagne's brow furrows, and Jamack considers just telling him. But part of him wants Scarlemagne to admit he killed them without so much as learning their names. He wants to wring that admission out of Scarlemagne, reluctant and fearful of the consequences of his disregard.

Then Scarlemagne surprises him.

"... Kwat," he says softly. Jamack's grip loosens in shock, hearing her name spoken into the world by a voice other than his own. "Kwat, and… Harris."

Jamack doesn't know why Scarlemagne knowing their names hits him the way it does. Maybe it's because he worked himself into a frenzy over the fact that he was so sure he _didn't._

It doesn't change anything, Jamack tells himself. So Harris and Kwat get the bare minimum of respect from the mute who killed them. They're still dead, and it's still Scarlemagne's fault.

"Sartori said their names," Scarlemagne supplies at Jamack's stunned silence. "When they…"

“When they,” Jamack repeats. 

Scarlemagne presses his lips together.

“Right. So since you owe me twice over, you’re gonna give me what I want.”

Scarlemagne purses his lips, like he thinks he can afford to be mullish right now. “I expect that’s my life, in exchange for theirs?”

“Maybe,” Jamack allows. “But first, you’re gonna tell me how they died. What they said, if they screamed… Whether they begged for mercy.” His voice descends in pitch and composure until he’s gritting gravel through his teeth. “Don’t hold back on my account, _Scarlemagne._ I want to hear every gruesome little detail.”

Scarlemagne’s expression turns guarded and uncertain. “Surely you don’t _actually_ want me to tell you that,” he insists.

“Oh,” Jamack laughs, “that is _so_ Kipo. She really sank her claws deep into your worthless hide, didn’t she?” He twists his hand in Scarlemagne’s cravat until the mandrill starts to choke. He shouts in Scarlemagne's face, “You don’t know what I want!”

“Fair enough,” Scarlemagne croaks, “but on the subject of Kipo, I’m guessing you don’t want her to think any less of you. What would she say if she knew you broke me out of my cell just to kill me?” A rattling laugh wheezes out of his throat. “I can’t _imagine_ how disappointed she’d be.”

Jamack releases him. Scarlemagne slumps, gasping. A vindictive little grin begins to curl at the corner of his lips, and he opens his mouth – probably to say something insufferably smug.

Jamack hits him again. This time he catches Scarlemagne’s prominent brow with his still-bleeding knuckles, sending the mandrill sprawling onto his back.

Jamack stands for a moment so he can sit on Scarlemagne’s chest, the better to menace him anew. "You’ve got some nerve threatening me with Kipo, considering you killed my friends and dropped them at her feet like dinner.” He grabs Scarlemagne’s muzzle and turns it toward him. “If I killed you, I’d _still_ have less to answer for than you.

“Also, hello, Mod Frog? Do you _really_ think Kipo could find your body if I didn’t want her to?” There is the small matter of her heightened sense of smell, actually. But he’s hoping Scarlemagne doesn’t know about that.

“Oh, I don’t doubt your discretion,” Scarlemagne says. He nudges Jamack’s hand away, so casually that Jamack lets his hand slip from Scarlemagne's face in surprise. Is Scarlemagne agreeing with him? That’s probably not good. Jamack narrows his eyes, but Scarlemagne’s gap-toothed smile persists. “If you hid my body, I imagine she’d never find it. Oh! Or you could find a mega mute to feed me to! Kipo would simply think I’d escaped in the night – I’m certainly clever enough to spring myself from a Timbercat’s jail cell, after all.”

“Uh-huh. Real clever,” Jamack says dryly.

“And the only one who’d know the truth would be _you,”_ Scarlemagne croons sweetly. “Kipo would search for signs of my passing day and night, tireless and inconsolable. And the knowledge of my fate would be safely tucked away in your black little heart.”

“… You’re one to talk about black hearts,” says Jamack, but he’s growing uncomfortable with this exercise in imagination.

“She’d _never_ suspect you of betraying her trust in such a way, poor, naive thing that she is. Not if you didn’t let on, of course.” Scarlemagne meets his eyes, raising a brow in challenge. “You could handle that, couldn’t you?”

Jamack is tempted to take back all the accusations he made about Scarlemagne’s success being an accident, because this guy absolutely has Jamack’s number and it’s kind of scary what he’s doing with it.

“Kipo doesn't _know_ me,” Jamack says, though a chasm opens deep inside him when he considers it might actually be true. That he’s capable of things Kipo would be appalled by. Why does that _bother_ him so much? “Just because she thinks everyone who so much as looks at her is her friend? That doesn’t mean I owe her.” 

Throwing someone under the bus has never felt this _bad_ before. How did Scarlemagne know his words would do so much to weaken his resolve? When did Jamack show his hand? Even if he reminds himself he’s just lying to Scarlemagne’s face, Jamack’s conscience still revolts with every word.

Kipo has _ruined_ him.

“Then by all means, kill me,” Scarlemagne says, spreading his arms in invitation.

Would Kipo understand Jamack’s grief, if she knew he’d killed Scarlemagne? She’d been pretty broken up about Harris and Kwat herself. And she had seen what the news had done to Jamack.

Would she forgive him?

Or would she look at him with those sad pink eyes, always overcast with disappointment and the knowledge of Jamack’s betrayal?

“Did you forget? I wanna hear their dying words,” Jamack reminds him, grasping for an excuse to let Scarlemagne live, now that he knows he lacks the conviction to go through with killing him. “You owe me that, Scarlemagne.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t know. I had someone else take care of it.”

… And there goes Jamack’s excuse. He’s not even surprised, at this point. Scarlemagne has been jerking him around and playing him like a fiddle for the better part of an hour. What’s one more heart-wrenching revelation, on top of all the rest?

“So? Are you going to kill me? Disappoint your _dear_ friend?”

Jamack rears his fist back, and Scarlemagne flinches hard. Jamack can’t even enjoy this: Scarlemagne weak and disgraced and afraid, at his mercy. Punching down used to feel _good._

What the hell happened to him?

Jamack lets his fist fall, and it lands with a soft _thud_ on Scarlemagne’s chest. 

"No," Jamack sighs, subdued. "I'm not gonna kill you."

Scarlemagne opens one eye, and Jamack feels his bender of an evening catch up with him all at once. His anger banks like a neglected bonfire. His limbs feel heavy and weak. He's tired. He misses Kwat and Harris.

"… So they really didn't say anything," murmurs Jamack, his voice rubbed raw.

Scarlemagne's chest rises and falls beneath him. Jamack barely has the energy to feel ashamed for how pathetically this half-baked plan has shaken out. He brought Scarlemagne out here to get some kind of closure. Revenge, maybe. And now he's sitting on top of him, begging for absolution. Scarlemagne certainly has no reason to give it to him – nevermind to be truthful about it if he does.

"They did try to bargain for their lives," Scarlemagne says quietly, "in the end."

Jamack exhales sharply, a sob that wants to be a laugh. "Mod Frogs to the last," he says, proud and destitute.

Scarlemagne nudges him. Jamack's legs are too weak to carry him, but he takes the silent request to move as gracefully as he can: he slumps off Scarlemagne and collapses into the dirt, laying on his back.

Scarlemagne slowly pushes himself to a seated position, peering at Jamack like an unpredictable feral animal who might yet show its teeth. His pupils are blown wide to see as much as they can in the dark, and the red of his irises can't be made out any more, at this distance. That's better, Jamack thinks.

Jamack rubs his eyes with his fists. "I hate you," he mumbles, feeling like a child.

Scarlemagne says softly, "Yes, I'm starting to gather that." Jamack shivers, reminded unwillingly of Kipo's gentle compassion.

"Okay. As long as you know," Jamack says nonsensically. 

The forest whispers around them, rustling leaves and creaking branches and buzzing nocturnal insects. The smell of decaying leaves begins to break through the sharp taste of syrupy alcohol lingering on Jamack's tongue. Maybe he'll just stay here and join the leaves.

"As much as I appreciated this opportunity to stretch my legs," Scarlemagne begins delicately, "I suspect I will be missed if I'm not back in my cell come morning."

Jamack sniffs. "What," he says, "you actually _want_ back in there?"

"It's not ideal," Scarlemagne concedes, "but I would so hate to disappoint Kipo."

 _You too?_ Jamack almost asks. But he figures neither of them would be here if they didn't care so embarrassingly deeply for her. "She deserves better than us," is what he settles on.

"Oh, most definitely," Scarlemagne agrees. "But good luck telling her that."

Jamack snorts. Yeah, Kipo wouldn't have any of that.

"Pleasure doing business with you, then," Jamack says flatly. "See you around."

He waits for Scarlemagne to leave him to languish in morose despondency. His eyes are shut tight with the effort of holding his tears at bay until he's alone again, so he only hears leaves rustling as Scarlemagne rises to his feet, then walks away.

"I was hoping," Scarlemagne says from a short distance away, and it's unexpected enough that Jamack pulls his hands from his eyes to watch the mandrill explain what exactly he was _hoping_ for, "that you'd be gracious enough to escort me back."

"What, you lose your bearings?" Jamack asks. "Just follow the smell of cat dander. You can't miss it."

Scarlemagne explains, "I'd rather you brought me back, as it would lend credence to my alibi in case my absence was noticed. I'm not well trusted by my jailers, if you can believe it."

Yeah, that Jamack can believe.

"… Also, I can't see in the dark."

Jamack sighs mightily and rises to his feet. Standing before Scarlemagne as he is now, the atmosphere is strange. Not tense, but definitely uneasy. Something uncertain in the way it's shifted.

"Get on," Jamack says, resigned, and grunts when Scarlemagne climbs on his back. "Ugh. You're heavy."

"I didn't hear you complaining earlier."

"Had other things on my mind," Jamack grumbles.

"Murder?" Scarlemagne cajoles.

"Okay, you're not helping. I could still change my mind, you know,” Jamack threatens. Scarlemagne doesn’t dignify that with a response, but he doesn’t need to. Jamack feels that gap-toothed smile at the back of his neck, calling his bluff.

Maybe he should stop threatening to change his mind in front of people who know better. The fact that _Scarlemagne_ is now someone who ‘knows better’ where Jamack is concerned is a little offbeat, but considering the evening he’s had he’s not going to read too much into it.

*

The Timbercat Jamack lifted the keys from is still sleeping soundly when they return, though the sun is beginning to rise past the columns of the trees, and sounds of activity can be heard throughout the village as others awaken and prepare to start their day. Jamack considers sitting them down and giving them a few pointers on security, but Scarlemagne is harmless right now. Downright domesticated by Kipo's kind heart.

Well, Jamack thinks. That makes two of them.

He tries to be bitter about it, but all he can muster is a kind of resigned gratitude.

The keyring is still hanging from the open door of the empty cell. Jamack gestures grandly at it, as if inviting Scarlemagne to take a seat on a throne – rather than the blanket pile the Timbercats scrounged up for their unexpected prisoner. It looks cozy, at least.

“Much obliged,” Scarlemagne says, playing off the exaggerated hospitality Jamack affects with his own sardonic gentility. He swans into the cell like he hasn’t a care in the world.

“Yeah, yeah,” Jamack grumbles, discomfited by the inexplicably harmonious mesh of their personalities. They have no good reason to get along, or even tolerate each other, but somehow in this moment they fit together. Like a chemical equation that’s theoretically sound, but liable to erupt into something volatile.

By that analogy, Jamack supposes the eruption has already happened. Now they’re just… simmering. Waiting for the next chemical change to take place.

He shakes his head to rid it of the overwrought imagery, only to find Scarlemagne peering at him curiously.

“What,” says Jamack, self-conscious.

“You should really get some rest,” Scarlemagne says. “You look _abysmal.”_

“It’s been a day.”

Scarlemagne hums and closes the cell door. Jamack waits for the door to slide home, the intricate mechanism of the latch clattering like a pile of wooden blocks. It’s not the dreariest holding cell Jamack has ever seen. The woodwork lends everything a warmth and pliability you just don’t get out of stone and iron. Jamack thinks he’d scarcely mind being imprisoned there at all, if he were in Scarlemagne’s place. He wonders how Scarlemagne feels about it.

Jamack glances up, sees Scarlemagne looking back at him and doesn’t ask.

He turns the key and pulls it from the lock.

“A little overdue,” Scarlemagne says, and Jamack looks back up at him in question, “but I don’t believe I ever got your name.”

After Jamack got on his case for not knowing Harris and Kwat’s names, he wonders if that’s why Scarlemagne wants to know his. “Can’t imagine you having many opportunities to use it,” Jamack says. It’s not like they’re friends now.

“Oh, good, so this _won’t_ be a nightly occurrence,” Scarlemagne says, and Jamack has to laugh at that – at the implication that Scarlemagne actually believed Jamack intended to bust him out every evening, just to whale on him and bleed on his clothes and have a crisis of bereavement all over him.

But there’s something lonely in Scarlemagne’s declaration of supposed relief. Like he knows Jamack is terrible company, but he’s desperately bored and willing to take whatever he can get at this point. _I appreciated this opportunity to stretch my legs,_ Scarlemagne had said. It was obviously sarcastic in context, but Jamack wonders just how much exercise Scarlemagne is getting. Probably not a lot. As if that’s even remotely his concern.

Whatever. It’s not like he has anything to lose. “It’s Jamack.”

Scarlemagne lights up, and good grief, he should _not_ be this easy to please. “Jamack,” Scarlemagne says. He extends a hand through the bars. “I’m charmed.”

Jamack takes his hand and shakes it, embracing the absurdity of the moment. “You’re _something,”_ he grumbles. The handshake is perfectly businesslike, and concludes after a socially acceptable length of time. The dissonant normality of that is patently ridiculous. But somehow it fits, anyway. Jamack shoves his hands in his pockets and turns to climb the stairs.

He has a moment of indecision, before he decides to embrace absurdity again.

“See you tonight, Scarlemagne,” Jamack calls.

“Oh?” Scarlemagne prompts. “I hope I don’t have anyone else’s death to answer for.”

Jamack winces, because that kind of hurts. It’s still too new. He takes a breath and says in a deliberately casual tone, “Nah. Maybe I’ll take you up to see the canopy.” He rubs his nose and sniffs. “No promises, though.”

Scarlemagne snorts. “Of course not. Who keeps promises?”

Jamack laughs softly, the sound bouncing off the tree trunk’s inner walls and lingering even after he's gone.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading im biig dumb emotional about frogs )":
> 
> i absolutely played myself, this is what i get for fabricating elaborate backstories for minor characters between seasons!!
> 
> anyway in case you're not done having an emotion you're welcome to inflict my underfrogs (harris+jamack+kwat) playlist on yourselves
> 
> https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5O1jUc8JDiFmESvBxnfF0Z?si=HqehgXB3TVaJRvo13n6ahw


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